-
How Are You?
You weren’t dead a day
before someone greeted me
Hi, how are you?
How can I say
My husband collapsed
and died yesterday.
I was up all night, donated
his organs, and walked away
for the last time.
And how are you?
-
The First Night
Our son drives home
to your dead body.
Five hours on the road—
just a teenager
alone in a car.
Will he see the truck
roaring past? The car
that cuts him off? The deer
startled and numb
in the middle of the road?
Will he stop to take a break?
Focus on pumping gas or
eating a cardboard burger—
anything not to think? But I
who had to call him
can’t stop.
Aline Soules‘ creative work appears in numerous literary journals such as the Kenyon Review and the Houston Literary Review, and in anthologies such as The Size of the World/The Shape of the Heart and Literature of the Expanding Frontier. Her creative credits can be viewed at http://sites.google.com/site/alinesoules/creative-resume.
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